The central mystery running through the fourth season of The Americans has been less a mystery than it has an overarching feeling of wonderment: Elizabeth is getting close to Young-Hee to be able to get the access codes for William to get the good stuff (read: really, really bad stuff) so that the Soviet Union can arm themselves with a biological weapon. But how would she go from friend to foe and manage to acquire the codes? Dinner for Seven dealt with that wonderfully, throwing a curveball into the mix with an inventive way of manipulating Don. After staging the scene to make it appear as though they’d had sex, Elizabeth Patty informed her friend’s husband that she was pregnant from their one-night stand and, after being asked to abort the baby, Philip - aka Patty’s brother - told Don that she had killed herself.
Two weeks ago, I wondered if staging the sex scene was a change of plan on Elizabeth’s part; a consequence of her struggling with her emotions. Now, it’s clear that this was the plan all along, and enlightens us as to why she was hesitant to follow through on the operation and why she wanted there to be another way out. Don cheating on Young-Hee, they can recover from. But Don grappling with the guilt over her wife’s friend having killed herself as a result of his actions? No way. That’ll likely lead to divorce (or worse), regardless of whether he admits the truth about his affair or Patty’s fate (though the two are interlinked), leaving Young-Hee heartbroken. This is the true impact of being a spy, as we’ve already seen this season with Martha. Unlike with Martha, however, this was a very sudden action that tipped the scales dramatically.
Hell, Elizabeth was so broken by what she had done that she resorted to talking with Pastor Tim on multiple occasions. In a similar scenario to Philip over the past season and a half, Elizabeth refrains from unloading her feelings onto her husband and sought out another output. Strange, given how she criticised est and questioned Philip’s relationship with Martha. While it’s clear she can see that sharing her problems, regardless of how vaguely she does, is cathartic, a reluctance to spill all with Philip indicates not spite (from his refusal to discuss his issues with her) or distrust, but a desire for assistance from someone who knows what they’re talking about. That’s not to say that Philip doesn’t know what he’s talking about: He’s no stranger to moral dilemmas eating away inside. But Tim provides a different perspective, one of peace and faith; Elizabeth may not believe in religion, but there’s a certain relief that only involvement with it can provide. Does she find what she’s looking for from Tim? Not especially. But it’s the thought that counts, because while Tim’s words ("All that matters is how we treat each other") make for useful advice, in this business, it’s impossible to be mindful of that.
As such, there’s a bitter irony to the following - and final - scene of the hour, in which Elizabeth is forced to murder one of two men who emerge from the dead of night to threaten her and Paige in a car park. Tim’s message wasn’t quite “treat others as you wish to be treated” but it might as well have been; while in an ideal world, people aren’t forced to resort to murder, Elizabeth is a trained professional and knows danger when she sees it. And when that danger even hints at reaching her daughter, it is extinguished without a second thought, regardless of the potential consequences for Paige. After asking Paige last week “Do you think we kidnap people, and what, that we kill them?” the Jennings couple are now placed into an impossible situation, one they’ve feared ever since Claudia relayed to them that the Centre wants Paige to be a second-generation illegal. They’ve tried to shield her from the minutiae of their operations, but now that she knows what her parents are capable of, Paige becomes volatile - even more so than she was immediately following last year’s reveal and perhaps even more so than Tim and Alice: While they may know the surface details, they know nothing of specifics and have been quite happy, aside from last week’s Ethiopia incident, to let the Jenningses continue their lives in the past eight months.
The situation with Paige was on a knife edge for much of the opening eight episodes this season. After a brief period where things had cooled down, the Jennings family and the KGB’s entire operation here balanced on the point of a pin, waiting for the smallest of forces to displace and bring it crumbling to the ground. Even before the time jump, with Martha potentially caught at any moment, Lisa threatening to go to the police and, yes, Tim and Alice learning of their secret, the situation was never as difficult for Philip and Elizabeth as this is. Those issues could be dealt with in one way or another. With Paige, it’s far more complicated given the blood relation. Granted, they needed to bring her into this aspect of the job eventually, but I can’t imagine this is how they would have wanted to do it. Then again, there was perhaps no good way of doing it and so this moment isn’t necessarily the worst thing in and of itself. The fallout will be the problem.
It’s the set-up and subsequent exploration of said fallout that makes The Americans unequivocally the best show on television right now - yes, I said it. We’ve reached a point in the season where I feel good about saying that there is nothing better on television at this moment in time, and if nothing tops it by the end of 2016, I wouldn’t be surprised - and I cannot wait to see what they do in the final two to top it all off.
Notes:
• I didn’t mention Keri Russell above, but once again, she stole the show. Her longing and empty stare as Philip returned from completing the mission managed to, in seconds, fully capture Elizabeth’s conflict. I’d mention that the Emmys are coming, but at this point, a nomination for her seems so implausible given the Academy’s refusal to acknowledge anything about this show aside from Margo Martindale that it doesn’t feel worth it to get my hopes up.
• Unfortunately, that was not Martindale pretending to be Patty’s mother. Instead, it was Marceline Hugot, who you may know as Gladys from the first season of HBO’s The Leftovers. She must have been busy elsewhere, because this was the perfect opportunity for another brief appearance.
• Mail Robot doing his best “they see me rollin’, they hatin’” in the background as Aderholt told Stan about the 911 call made about Betty’s (Lois Smith) death when Mail Robot was being repaired after Gaad went “batshit”. That operation could be in trouble very, very soon.
• The episode’s title obviously referred to the rather awkward dinner between the Jenningses, Tim, Alice and Stan. First of all, kudos to director Nicole Kassell whose framing of the scene where all the participants (except Henry) met by the front door was truly magnificent. Secondly, this now sets up a big problem for the Jenningses, because not only does Alice have her lawyer who possesses that incrimination tape, but she and Tim now know that the man who lives just yards away from the spies is an FBI agent (unknowingly) investigating them. Anyone else getting a little hot around the collar, or is it just me?
• Speaking of Stan, Dinner for Seven took his story is a fascinating new direction, electing for him to cut Oleg out of his life rather than try to work him, as had been originally planned. The reason? Stan doesn’t want Oleg on his conscience after everything that’s happened (Amador, Vlad, Nina, Martha). Some excellent work as ever from Noah Emmerich.
• Ironic that after Elizabeth told Philip that the Centre wouldn’t kill Tim without telling them, he contemplates the fact that the inclusion of Gaad’s Thailand trip in his report led to his death.
• The show was renewed for a fifth and sixth season, which will be the last two. The fifth season will run the standard 13 episodes next year with the final season comprised of ten episodes in 2018. Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields have often said that they envisaged the fifth season being the final year, but it seems that they had a change of heart and that the story required them to do another season on top, which FX are of course allowing them to do. The ratings have never been great, but it does so well critically and FX appear invested in allowing the best shows they have the creative freedom they need, so it was never really in doubt that the show would be given the chance to go out on its own terms. 75 episodes is a seriously good run, and I’m excited to see how the show wraps up.
What did everyone think of Dinner for Seven? How does everyone feel about the renewal? Leave your thoughts in the comments and be sure to vote in our episode poll below.
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